


Under the Bridge (the persistence of trauma)

by superhumandisasters



Series: Up Close Ache [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol, Amnesia, Anal Sex, Emotional Manipulation, Flashbacks, HTP, HYDRA Trash Party, Hand Jobs, Hurt No Comfort, Identity Porn, M/M, Oral Sex, Post-Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Service, Sexual Frustration, not that you'd ever forget Pierce is the Worst but man is he ever, resilient Winter Soldier, yet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-19 13:38:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8210561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superhumandisasters/pseuds/superhumandisasters
Summary: Washington DC, 1994.Alexander Pierce remembers touching the jaguar. In the garden, a piece of darkness detaches itself from the night.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written at the hydratrashmeme for the following prompt:  
>  _Between wipes he doesn't really remember how being turned on feels, or even what it is. Sometimes he tries to deal with it by himself, successfully or unsuccessfully. Sometimes he goes to an authority figure for help._
> 
> More details below. All installments are un-beta'd, so corrections and suggestions are welcome.
> 
> [Chinese translation provided here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11816583) by [flymetothemoon16](http://archiveofourown.org/users/flymetothemoon16/pseuds/flymetothemoon16) \-- thank you so much!

Washington DC, 1994.

Alexander Pierce remembers touching the jaguar. 

He remembers it was stretched across a tailgate on a Colombian plantation, flies buzzing in the fields and the morning air already clogged with heat. He'd imagined something vaguely like a leopard, but up close he could see the difference. It was built like a tank. The glossy black pelt rose and fell under his fingertips slow as the minute hand of a clock.

"Dark morph," said the head trapper. "Melanistic. A dominant gene." The fellow seemed intelligent and fairly educated, for a local. "The jaguar is not like other cats. It does not kill like other cats." He explained that its jaws were second only to the hyena, that where the lion or tiger killed by strangulation, the jaguar simply crushed the skull of its prey. Punctured through sea turtle shells, hauled cattle up trees, pulled horses across rivers. It is not like other cats. Its strength is monstrous. 

"Magnificent beast," Alexander said. "Seems a shame to put it down."

The tracker shrugged. "He's a man-eater. Very rare for the jaguar, but too dangerous to let live now that he's got a taste."

"Why sedate it, then? Why not put it down right away?"

"We’ll send him in for study first. Unusual animal like this, he may have much to teach us. Samples will be taken." The trapper glanced down. The shredded corpses of four of his hounds were piled under the truck bed. They had screamed like children in the end. Alexander hadn't known dogs could sound like that. "But what must be done must be done."

Pierce nodded. What must be done. He felt the slab of the jaguar's dark skull, its muscular flank. So much power lying dormant under his hands. He wished Nick was here to appreciate the moment -- Fury would understand. 

Michelle, however, wouldn't even touch it. She stood apart and silent in the tall grass, could barely look at the cat. He tried not to be disappointed.

And this was before the incident in Bogotá (before the scales fell away and a light snuffed out), because the truth is Michelle had _always_ been skittish, like her mother. Like her mother, she was beautiful but in need of guidance. Like so many, she stood in the field and had refused to look at what was right in front of her.

~~~

Two thousand miles and what feels like a thousand years away, snow is cleansing Pierce’s estate, killing precocious flowers in their sleep. The middle of March is a late snowfall for DC, probably the last of the winter. Nickel-sized flakes recast the bushes into sculptures of black and white, and ice clings to his blossoming fruit trees until the garden outside the wall-length windows is transformed into a scene from a kabuki. 

He is not sulking. He's just sitting alone in his pool house. With the lights off. 

Pierce taps up and down a mahogany armrest. Michelle isn't coming. He'd arranged a visit for her as a surprise, but she begged off with the excuse that she'd already made plans with her mother. If he'd been a little sharp over the phone, it was only because of how much trouble it had been to coordinate his schedule for the weekend. He'd taken care of everything, he always has to protect her. Now here he is, while she's in the Keys with his estranged wife. And Raúl. Pierce pinches the bridge of his nose. On that fucking _yacht._ Really, as brilliant as his daughter can be, some of Michelle's lapses in judgement are baffling. 

But the weekend won't be a complete loss. There are benefits to a suddenly open calendar and lucky timing. He’s secured an appointment with a new guest, one far more difficult to arrange than his daughter, and much more expensive.

In the garden, a piece of darkness detaches itself from the night. 

It is observable only as an absence: a hole in the latticework of swirling flakes, a missing tooth, a void. The darkness flows to a spot just beyond the reach of Pierce’s landscaping lights, waits. It waits.

Pierce curls one finger; that’s enough.

A glass door slides open, and the gust of equalizing air pressure makes more noise than the Winter Soldier. 

Pierce points the same finger to the floor beside his chair, says, “Heel.” 

The soldier stalks across the tile, cased in the soundless black of oiled leather. It halts over the spot where Pierce pointed. Ice crystals clumped in its hair and coat are already melting in the pool house steam, but for a moment the soldier looks dappled as the jaguar’s African cousin. The leopard, Pierce has read, may be leaner, but is more likely to take human prey. The soldier is easy to think of as an animal when it moves like one: all rolling hip joints and a silhouette that bleeds into the background. The animal is there in the flat stillness of its gaze, and in the red dust of Rwanda still clinging to its gear. Not all of the flecks are mud.

Rwanda, what a hellhole. It’s about to get worse. “I'm glad we could put this together on such short notice.”

The soldier's gaze locks onto him for a few seconds before moving on. Its stare is restless, touches every surface in the room. The constant sweeping of eyes above the mask is an uncanny contrast to its closed expression. The soldier doesn't move, but the air around it vibrates.

“Oh,” Pierce says, “I know what you’re thinking.” His voice refocuses the soldier’s attention. "Heating a pool this size in the winter, with only glass for insulation? Not very energy efficient. But I had solar panels installed to help offset the electricity use -- better for the environment. Thought you'd appreciate that."

Blank gray eyes bore into him. 

Pierce makes one corner of his mouth quirk up in the bashful, artless half-smile that took hours to master in the mirror, practiced and perfected against old recordings. It begins in the dimpling of his left cheek, the downward look before his gaze draws up warm and slow, rising like the sun through the curtain of his lashes. Brows steepled with a touch of good-humored irony and uncertainty, humble but hungry for assurance. Weak, proud. He doesn't plan for a lock of sandy hair to come loose and fall across his face, but he appreciates the moment of serendipity.

The soldier, still looming black against blackness, melts a little.

"It's warm in here. You ought to get out of that heavy gear," Pierce says.

Body armor slams into the tile with surprising violence. Pierce guesses it weighs at least thirty pounds from the force of impact -- all drop, no bounce. Deft fingers fly over buckles, buttons, zippers as more gear plummets to the floor. The soldier's efficiency is always a pleasure to watch, but without a shell of armor and weaponry, it looks... vulnerable. Almost civilian, standing there in a black undershirt and trousers. 

A surreal image. Pierce has half a mind to dress the soldier in pajamas, just to see.. What does a weapon look like in formal wear, rags, in stockings? These are the little experiments he enjoys.

"Why don't you take the rest off? Get rid of everything. And then," he surveys the room, "Something from the bar, I think."

The remaining uniform puddles around the soldier’s feet, and the shred of normality is gone. Most of its flesh hasn't seen the sun for half a century. It’s milky pale under its leathers, hard as marble and puckered around the ungraceful border where metal meets skin. The pool's underwater light casts up nets of turquoise that ripple over the canvas of its naked body and collect in its irises, lending them the illusion of life. It steps out of the piled equipment and moves toward the bar opposite the garden window.

The soldier glares at the dimly glittering wall of chrome and glass. Turns back to Pierce. 

“The usual,” Pierce says. This is another one of his experiments.

It paces back and forth in front of the bar before leaping lightly up on the marble counter. The top shelf is in reach, where he keeps the best bourbon. _Yes._

The slide of each muscle is on display under its skin. Pierce doesn't consider himself interested in men, not usually. There have been rare occasions, special individuals. But the soldier isn't a man, is it? It is less than a man, but also more perfect. Something existing on an entirely different axis than men can be measured by. Well made, well conditioned, always pleasing to look upon. It reaches for the set of Pappy Van Winkle bottles ( _yes, yes_ ) with its entire body, until it’s standing on its toes, flexing up from the counter in a ballerino's arc. The motion sends angles and curves rippling up its calves to its thighs, bunching muscles in its ass, back, shoulders. The metal hand grips a shelf while the meat hand explores three bottles before closing around the neck of the Family Reserve. _Yes._

Pierce feels himself throb. “Good boy.”

The soldier hops down quiet as a cat, covers half the floor between them in the time it takes Pierce to say, “Forgetting something?”

A single blink betrays its frustration. It snaps its head back to the bar, searching for The Usual with the same intensity Pierce imagines it devotes to any other mission. It passes right over the tumblers, and Pierce worries the snifters might be confusing -- it’s an easy mistake to make -- but the soldier goes straight for the delicate Glencairn whisky glass with the sound base and full, curving hips. This it offers to its master.

 _”Such_ a good boy,” Pierce purrs. Its mouth softens to a bow.

Pierce sets the bourbon and glass on his side table, then motions for the soldier to sit by his feet. All it takes is one tap to its side, and long legs fold under it obediently. Pierce doesn't need guns, restraints, or whips, doesn't need raised fists or raised voice. He's a better handler than that. The Fist of HYDRA anticipates the direction of his touch with the intuition of a dancer. The Fist of HYDRA, spiced with streaks of foreign soil and foreign blood, kneels. The accoutrements of war decorate Pierce’s custom mosaic tiling, and all that concentrated, fluid might is his to conduct. He wants to feel it, itches to feel it seething under his hands. And he can, so he does.

Pierce traces two fingers along the soldier's jaw. "Smooth." Smooth as the rest of it. "Gas mask this time, huh?" 

It leans into his hand. Its throat is a column of stone, but feverish hot with a pulse that flutters like a trapped hummingbird against his palm. Warm, corded meat, then the strange juncture where he can feel the titanium alloys shift and recede under its skin to anchor somewhere mysterious in the soldier’s core. Little deltas of scar tissue where the metal plates break through its surface -- cool. Its outer prosthetic is slick and cold as the dead blossoms buried in his garden, cold as Siberia. His fingernails click over a sloughing layer of ice.

He had ordered the soldier to bring ice for his drink the last time they met. That was part of the experiment. Then he had slipped a little white pill between its lips, because Alexander Pierce always takes his bourbon neat.  
               
This little white pill. He keeps a crowd in his pocket, in a little white bottle with no markings. It has proved useful for agents and witnesses, but even the chemists in R&D don’t realize their little pills have been perfected on the Winter Soldier itself.

All Pierce’s instructions for “the usual” have been left perfectly intact, but the detail about the ice has been excised as if it had never existed. The gap holds true almost 18 months later. Excellent. The power and scope of the chair is a sledgehammer; the pill is a scalpel. Tomorrow the project leader will receive a note proclaiming the latest dosage has been the most effective yet. She is used to not knowing where the information comes from.

“A job well done deserves a reward, does it not?” Pierce slips a sheepskin moccasin between the soldier’s legs. He knows the soldier is only a few inches taller than him, yet aside from the tapering waist and fine-boned wrist, the impression it projects is massive, even kneeling like this. God, its _thighs._ Pierce hefts its soft, uncut cock with the toe of one moccasin. “Touch yourself here.”

It lays its flesh palm where it has been directed. Crescents of dried blood rim the soldier’s cuticles. 

“No, keep moving your hand. Yes, that way. You’ll like it.” 

The soldier awkwardly kneads its genitals. Close enough.

“The trick to these little indulgences is to keep them special.” He unplugs the stopper of the Family Reserve, and buttery notes of vanilla flood the damp air. Oak and caramel. “Can’t over-do it. Rarity is part of the appeal and, if luxury is unlimited, is some of its value not lost? Yeah, regular strokes, just like that. Harder. Good boy.”

The Glencairn glass concentrates the nose into a heady aroma of red delicious apples and desserty creams with a touch of linen floating over oil.  Pierce gives the glass a swirl to appreciate the bourbon’s syrupy legs. His other hand tangles in the soldier’s hair. The dark locks are gritty. Its cheek rests against Pierce’s knee, and he can see its shoulder still working in the attempt to obey him.

“Isn’t that nice, sweetness?” 

The soldier knows not to respond to these questions. A line of concentration creases its forehead, but its eyes stay unfocused and empty. Pierce smoothes the wrinkle away with his thumb, traces down the straight bridge of its nose, presses on the cleft of its chin. He could run his hands over everything and the soldier would still be untouchable. Whatever moves behind those huge pupils is as alien and unfathomable to Pierce as his own mind must be to the soldier. 

Would the Winter Soldier even know itself in a mirror? Like a human? Michelle had been nearly a year and a half old before he saw the light of self-recognition flower in her eyes. 

Nothing flowers in the soldier’s eyes. No lights, no innocence, yet he can’t deny there’s a certain beauty in its distance. The flatness of that jaguar gaze only makes the interruption of it, the flickers of something below, that much more satisfying. Pierce knows he can fish it out, just like he knows the soldier’s mouth will open soft and wet for him with no hint of the predator.

“You can have the first taste.” Pierce dips two fingers into the glass. “Here.” 

The soldier blinks a few times when Pierce pushes between its lips, then laps cautiously at his fingers. 

“Warms you right up, doesn’t it? But goes down smooth as you please. Pay attention to the finish: just the right length, woody with a hint of spice.” He works his hand deeper, slow pets through the heat of its mouth. Its tongue tickles long after it’s nursed the last film of bourbon from his skin.

When he pulls its face into his lap, the Winter Soldier moves for him as easily as his own body. The other handlers are fools to have so much trouble with it.

 _”Shit.”_ Bourbon spreads across his throat, honey-sweet with a mouthfeel like velvet. The last time he indulged in a bottle of the Van Winkle Reserve was the last time he had his dick buried in the soldier. It’s a fine pairing. His legs slump apart and it crowds closer, his eagerly rooting pup. A good boy. Pierce lets his head fall back against the chair. He feels drunk already. He didn’t teach the soldier how to do this, doesn’t know who did, though he knows what the STRIKE teams get up to in the field. The soldier certainly doesn’t know. Most of the time it doesn’t even know what skill sets -- and it is very skilled -- it possesses until one is accessed directly. 

He’s wondered, of course. Pierce has read the Soldier's file, one of the few who has. He knows what it is, who it is. He knows how long the sergeant kept screaming for Rogers in the hopes his dead friend would save him from the operation table one more time. 

He also knows he’s not alone in his suspicions, and about the speculation that was silenced by HYDRA, the books and articles that never got published. The AIDS crisis has been going well, and HYDRA can't afford the image of Steve Rogers to be called into question right now, not when it’s been such a useful tool in driving moral panic. What would Captain America say?

The soldier does something so good with its mouth, Pierce doesn’t care where it learned to suck cock. That thing where its lips are sealed tight around his head while its tongue pushes upwards, swirling hard against the glans. The amount of friction, the slick friction, is obscene. 

“Shit,” he croaks again. 

One hand clenches in the soldier’s hair, the other idly roves over its nape and the supple hot cartilage of an ear. Pierce stares at his ceiling. Hallucinogenic shifts of the pool lighting crowd the terracotta. It makes him dizzy, so he keeps looking. He’s got one of those new saltwater systems -- he can’t stand the odor of chlorine. 

Snowfall muffles every noise beyond the gentle lapping of water and the soldier’s plush mouth swallowing him for another deep pull. And it pulls and it pulls so wet and so strong. Just the sound of it is straight from a locker room fantasy.

Pierce wobbles upright to take a sip from his glass, looks down at the weapon suckling with hollowed cheeks, bobbing head. Darting eyes. Its lips belong to Pierce, but when he isn’t speaking its gaze goes back to surveying the environment like a good little soldier. Its focus never rests for more than a second on any one thing. Doesn’t rest on him at all. Flicking, always flicking. It’s extremely off-putting.

“Stop.” 

The soldier’s attention snaps back to Pierce as it jerks its head away. Hunched shoulders wait for punishment. Its mouth: shiny with spit and swollen red with use. 

“No, I mean look at me.” He sighs. It looks but doesn’t see. This fucking thing. “Keep sucking. Keep sucking and look at me, and I’ll tell you a story.” He guides it back to its task.  
_“Once, there was a boy.”_  
The story of you is that you are a story. The mind is the story of a body. The self is an accumulated history of firing neurons -- a million individual cells that live and die and replace one another, yet still claim a single identity as constant. This is true for everyone except the Winter Soldier.

 _“The boy was made from ice and snow, and HYDRA gave him life. There were many other snow children, and they all lived together in a big red house.”_  
HYDRA learned the language the body speaks to itself, the language of the mind: electricity over architecture. Proteins forge new neural pathways as the brain reshapes itself into each memory. Easy enough to hijack. HYDRA teaches the soldier’s cells to tell it different stories, stolen blueprints. The soldier is a beautiful tapestry of action potentials with a body, but no history, no place, no time. No story. Its skull beats with intelligent cells flashing like fireflies trapped in a child’s jar, like abandoned lighthouses on distant shores.

 _“This snow boy was weaker than the others, with a crooked spine and bad lungs, but he had a strong heart. All he wanted, more than anything, was to serve HYDRA and make the world a better place._ (Ah.) _He wanted it even more than the bigger, tougher boys and girls._ (Ahhn, fuck.)”  
Before he was Pierce, before he was Alexander, Alex saw Captain America in Chicago. Hot lights, the taste of popcorn and euphoria, falling clouds of sharp silver confetti. Every memory of that day is an act of recreation: copies of copies, each diverging further from the truth, because that’s how the brain works. His memories of Cap are worn smooth as an old river stone. 

The soldier's memories of the Captain, like everything captured by the immaculate architecture of its brain, are perfect -- incorruptible, sterile. Inaccessible. 

Michelle’s memories had dug into deep ruts and grown huge. Nightmares set in the basement of the Colombian embassy, dreams filled with dirty gags and staccato gunfire. The mind cannot be separated from the body.

The soldier chokes. Its jaw is stretched around him and trembling with effort, but it keeps its dead gaze and clever mouth on task. It won’t dare pull away unless a touch from Pierce gives the command. Pierce releases his grasp on the soldier’s scalp and waits for its throat to stop spasming. The wet constriction is distracting.

 _“The boy’s dream was to give his mind, his body, his everything. He tried so hard. At first he lied, wanting to be accepted. But it wasn’t his lies HYDRA wanted, it was his true self and his strong heart. So HYDRA took him and flushed out his weakness with pain until, at last, his body could be obedient. And HYDRA gave him a powerful left hand, and he became their fist. He was grateful.”_  
It’s easy to make stories about Cap once you realize stories were all he ever was. Another cog in history’s propaganda machine. By the time Pierce was older than Rogers ever lived to be, he knew this. Now it feels absurd that he invested so much in a man young enough to be his son now, a child who thought he’d known what it meant to make hard choices.

Bogotá had gotten out of hand. The ELN rebels were only meant to kill the ambassador and two others -- a distraction from the real assassination: the programs coordinator, a double agent. The hostage bungle would have never happened with the Winter Soldier. Things had gotten out of hand, but it was Nick who showed him that he hadn’t gone too far. Rather, he hadn’t gone far enough. Pierce’s mistake was trying to play half of two games in a broken system. He had lacked the will to force his own rules. He would never lack again. And he would trust no one.

 _“The boy was cleansed. He grew so clean and so strong that he wasn't a little snow boy any more, but something greater._ (Just like that, yeah. Mmh. Yeah.) _He became a tool to change the world, like his arm, and like pain. He and pain were brothers.”_  
Human beings are flexible. They can bend in ways more complex and elegant than any metal. The limiting factor is the body’s frailty. Take that away, and the art is only limited by the artist, their vision, conviction. Time. Potential can be unlocked and distilled. With the right artist and an infallible body, a man may overcome his native weakness, especially after the man has been pared away and all that is left is the soldier. The soldier is capable of enduring pain that would kill a man a dozen-fold over or more, but, in failing to die, it becomes that much purer.

The Winter Soldier will strangle itself on his dick if he tells it to. Involuntary tears stream down its cheeks and bead in its lashes; its brow is creased with faint lines of distress. Pierce has seen the soldier run on broken limbs with less reaction. It's struggling for breath -- perhaps he’s been a bit rough -- yet when he taps under its chin, it clenches its eyes shut and obediently takes him in deeper. Beautiful.

 _“What you must understand: selfishness is a survival mechanism. It is innate because it has kept individuals alive over time, even while holding us back as a species. A lamentable waste, at first. But as our weaponry has evolved, our nature foretells a tragedy. Translate our selfishness to the macro-scale. We now have the power to destroy ourselves, and so we will. Realizing this, our job is to stop it at any cost.”_  
The fetor of extinction hangs over feudalism, slavery, the Cold War. It stinks of mustard gas and Vietnam. Watergate, Bogotá. Pierce swallows more bourbon to wash away the taste of bile.

Cap had preached: _“‘Trust others to make the right decision.’  
A hope disproved by the entire history of humanity. It never did last, not once. Millenia of suffering and chaos, for what? The self-centered desire to focus on the individual, the belief that _ you _might be different in spite of all evidence to the contrary? Pride. This philosophy reinforces the status-quo, and the status-quo is_ shit _, my friend. So nothing ever changes, because it feels better to follow your own desires and ignore the truth._

 _That way of thinking means well, and it will kill us all if we let it. This is weakness, and the weak must submit. The burden of survival is meant for the strong. It must be defended, and our price, our duty, is to see the world without flinching and make the hard decisions.”_  
For some this epiphany weighs too heavy. There is grief. 

Michelle recounted everything in a therapy session, then her daddy gave her half a little white pill in a paper cup. A little white pill to melt it all away. Something for the pain, something to make the world less ugly if you close your eyes and pretend, if you want to. Most everyone does.

Close your eyes, close your eyes, close your eyes.

Pierce yanks on the soldier’s hair to get that coveted cringe, a flinch, that anything. He pulls all the way out before plunging back into its body again and again. Its metabolism burns hot in defiance of the winter, and this stupid thing will live longer than Pierce ever could. Brutalize its mouth, make it mean something. God, but he’s so close. 

It pulls away. _“That isn’t,”_ a soft voice rasps. “That is not what you have said…” Words lay clumsy on its tongue. Throat full of cobwebs, where English dental fricatives harden to Slavic stops. _(Dat iss not vaat you haff sayd.)_

“I beg your pardon?” Pierce stares down, incredulous. This talking gun with red cheeks and drool-slicked chin, this tool. Just some grimy POW on its knees, daring to say:

“But, but you said...” Its brow furrows in concentration.

“Uh. Protect,” it croaks. “You said.” Its swollen lips work to form sentences. “Strength is a gift, that we might shield the weak. Keep them safe, give them voice. Strong is for _carrying.”_

Fuck. 

He hadn’t thought it was actually listening to him. That it even _could,_ brain-damaged as it is. Fuck.

The first backhand whips its head around. Pierce knows to land under the cheekbone (could lay it open to the bone if he wears certain rings), and the soldier leans into the corrective blow, like this time it might finally take. In the back of its skull it knows only one of them is allowed to make corrections. It crumples halfway to the tile before hauling itself back upright.

“I believe,” Pierce says, "that you’re mistaken.”

It looks at him. Seems to think about this. “No.” 

The next swing is like hitting concrete. The soldier does not acknowledge the strike. Pain lights up Pierce's knuckles and courses into his arm. For just a moment, the soldier is more unyielding than a wall. 

The weapon says, “No.”

What flits through Pierce’s mind is not a thought: a sound. The memory of a coughing roar just audible under the jungle’s squall, in the darkness before the sun rose and the dogs began to scream. An ugly moment when Pierce’s hindbrain reduced him to prey. 

This is worse. The eyes turned on him do not belong to some big cat, but a creature that knows itself in a mirror.

Cold seconds pass. Pierce schools his features to pleasant blandness and chooses a tone very, very carefully. 

"There, there. You know how you get when you’ve been awake too long." He makes his sigh sound like exasperation, though not unaffectionate. No big deal. Hints of that sunshine smile break through, always the Friend. "You know how you get." 

Pierce folds one leg of his pajama bottoms and wipes the drool from its chin with merino wool. Its eyes track his face, not his hands. Gray-green, teetering. He clucks and whispers nonsense like he’s talking down a thoroughbred, big thoroughbred gone twitchy and dangerous when the power running through it grows too large for even its marvelous flesh. And then. 

Then it withers under his palm at last. Pierce has never been in a fire fight, but he can recognize a bullet dodged. There's not a moment to waste.

"Climb into papa's lap, hmm, silly kitten?" 

When Pierce takes it by the throat, the soldier leans into his touch desperately. It’s huge-eyed and grimacing. A rare thing, for the soldier to wear fear, but it doesn’t pull away while Pierce leads it upward. It knows what it did. It knows, and it all but falls over itself to obey, clambering into the wide chair with none of its usual grace. Most of its weight stays propped awkwardly on one arm rather than on Pierce, and the rattan groans under two hundred extra pounds of assassin.

Its dick is still at half-mast. Pierce takes a moment to marvel over the heat of it -- accelerated metabolism, he reminds himself -- and with a few strokes the soldier is fully hard again. Responsiveness has never been a problem. “See,” Pierce purrs. “Isn’t that better, isn’t that nice?”

The bright spots over its cheekbones could be the product of shame or Pierce’s knuckles. It frowns down at its knees, shoulders hunched, unable to meet his face. The soldier grunts when he tightens a fist around its erection. He can feel its heartbeat accelerate. 

No clear recordings of Steve Rogers’ voice remain on record, so Pierce is making a guess when he rumbles, “There ya go, buddy. This’ll set you right.” He slides its foreskin slowly over the swollen head, back down again, slower.

It stops breathing. He thumbs at the leaking tip, and the sinew of its belly flexes in a rising wave. So easy to imagine how it would feel -- being inside the soldier -- when he can see its torso ripple with the precision of perfect muscle definition. Pierce can admit he’s past his prime, though not by much, yet even when he’d been at home among the young golden gods, his body had never been like this. He still had his Olympus, but the soldier is a Titan.

He smooths his other palm over the white column of its thigh, tracing each of the three distinct outer muscles of its quadriceps. “Now you try. There, just like before.”  

The cybernetic arm is a functional sculpture, but its limp hand takes some guidance. Its hunched posture is tiresome, so Pierce hauls its head back by the hair on its crown. "Nothing to be shy about," he purrs.

Better. Its throat is bared, spine curved, meat open to him. Bowed mouth gaped open in silence. It doesn't panic anymore, not for decades. It doesn’t flinch or pull away. What’s the point?

Pierce knows what goes on when he's not around. He knows some of its handlers don't see the point of lubrication, or simply prefer to go without, but _really._ He’s not a barbarian. A tube drawn from the pocket of his robe does the job quickly enough. He slicks himself while the soldier paws at his own dick a few inches away, trying to mimic Pierce's technique.

“Now, why don’t you tell me more about what I said. The first time. You remember that day, don’t you?”

The soldier nods at him stupidly while he adjusts its hips. 

_“Report.”_

“I, I uh.” Its gaze turns inward and uncertain. “You said much, you--” It breaks off in a wordless cry when Pierce enters it.

The Winter Soldier is nothing if not durable. Its clenching is… intense. Combined with the thrill of a near miss still thumping in his chest, Pierce has to take a moment to steady himself. The molten core of it threatens to overwhelm. 

The soldier is shaking all over even as its body sinks down to envelope Pierce like a glove. Dozens have died in the sights of its rifle, but how many can claim to have seen its eyes roll back like this? How sweet it is to throw those regimented breaths off time, make the scarred chest heave. The kid’s a natural. Knows how to be fucked even when it doesn’t. Especially then.

“I’m sorry, didn’t quite catch that. You were saying?”

Bruised lids flutter closed in concentration. “Then, you were-- _huhhh.”_

Pierce thrusts up twice and is rewarded with a stifled sob. Each time, it rocks down to meet his hips. Pierce wonders if the soldier is aware of how it's baring its teeth.

“So _angry.”_ The Winter Soldier still has its eyes squeezed shut. Its head lolls back, and the grimace slackens closer to pleasure. "So angry that day. You seemed… it was you, but bigger. Not on outside, but you: the important parts. All of you huge and lit up, on fire. Beautiful,” the soldier gasps. “Mad as I’d ever seen you. Thought you were gonna sock me one right in the mouth, best day of my fuckin’ life.”

"Tell me."

"You’d gotten into a donnybrook with the _Ortsgruppen._ Not for the first time, but never this bad. Ridgewood, Bushwick? I don't... Some kind of rally out in the square, I’d have taken us a different way if I’d known. _Freunde des Neuen Deutschland_. Friends of the New Germany. Of course you had to wade right in like a reckless idiot." The tension in its wide shoulders relaxes, and the soldier melts against Pierce. "So prouda' you."

"Whole new level of mad," it continued. "Distilled to a higher plane of existence kind of mad. I think it went so far you circled back around to calm again. And you never did raise your voice, not even once. I couldn't get over that.

"The quiet way you got to talking, it was like something straight out of a book, or like you hear in Church. Me, I was there to serve witness. I could see you, really see you: this one true thing moving through a sea of ugliness and hate. Not perfect, not pure, just... good. And I don't know how, but the worse the ugliness got, the brighter you burned. Nothing they did could stop you loving them. The rot couldn't touch you, and all you wanted was to help lift the rest of us out. It's always been like that with you, but for the first time I saw how impossible it was, that you could be this way, but it was real. Hit me like a truck. You were the realest thing I'd ever laid eyes on."

One flesh arm and one metal wrap around Pierce. The soldier burrows its forehead into his shoulder while it shudders in a few breaths. "I, I saw you were meant for something great. All the _Freunde_ saw was a skinny little punk with a mouth on him, still limping from a tussle with Robbie Salzberg. They were stupid enough to think you were weak, and foul enough to think that's something needs wiping out. Because you terrified them, those grown men. They were afraid, so they were gonna snuff you out. Now comes my job, besides witnessing.

"You hated me dragging you out of there. I had to throw you over my shoulder in the end, which pissed you off worse, but pride was gonna be the least of our wounds in another minute. So I hauled you out of there and made for Vinegar Hill like my ass was catching fire.

"You couldn't stop wheezing by then. We get out from the _Ortsgruppen_ just in time for your own fucking body to start attacking. I had to cool you off, calm you down. Keep you _safe._ Would do anything for you.

“That’s why I brought you here.”

Pierce frowns. “Here?”

“Was supposed to be a surprise, _hah_ ,” the soldier murmurs, “I was savin’ it, but I guess we can celebrate your birthday a week early if means you not blowing your top. Anything for you.” It presses its lips to the hinge of Pierce’s jaw. 

The Winter Soldier never kisses without being prompted, but now it’s peppering the side of his face with them. The Winter Soldier always struggles to maintain composure -- the stoicism of a weapon -- but this thing is rutting itself on Pierce’s lap in earnest, and gusting moans against his skin between sentences.

Pierce finds he doesn't care much for the change. His gasps from the soldier are hard-won. These sighs are freely and cheaply given.

Pierce turns his mouth away from it and says, “Tell me more about this place.”

“It’s something, ain’t it? Who knew all this was hidden down under the Bridge? All the stone arches and vaults, feels like being in a castle almost. Real _Count of Monte Cristo_ stuff. Thought you’d like that.” It ducks to hide a shy smile. “Nice and cool, too. It's always cool like this. I’ll sneak you in when the weather gets too boiling to stand, but we gotta keep it a secret. It’s ours, our blue grotto.” The soldier tips its head back; Pierce's pool house ceiling dances with light like an underwater cave. “See?”

"It's beautiful." He reaches between them to jerk the soldier a few times, and something close to laughter rasps against his ear.

"I've been so afraid to tell you." It offers him a wobbly grin. "I'm not-- I know you're better in a way I'll never be. I know I can't be like you, but I'm not such a fool I can't recognize a good thing when I see it. I'll try harder, I promise," it husks, nosing Pierce's hair. "I want to be good, too, I want. Ah, _that._ The way you feel in me." 

When Pierce shivers, the smile flips to concern, and in a second its streamlined bulk is curling around him. Even now, it's careful to spare him most of its weight. "Are you cold? Let me keep you warm. Please. Let me keep--" A titanium thumb ghosts over his cheek, and its expression crumples. "Just, let me keep you,” it begs.

He cups the soldier's face, does the special smile: "Always." 

It lights up for him with the untarnished bliss of ignorance. The soldier is so young in this memory, and Pierce realizes he must have looked the same way once, back when he was still Alex. Michelle had too, when they’d all thought the world had been something worth loving as well as protecting. 

Pierce says, "You love me, don't you? It's okay."

And just like that, the soldier is weeping with broken joy. Its heartbeat thunders through the bare chest it presses against Pierce. Its grin is flushed, dizzy.

This time he lets it kiss him on the mouth, and Pierce can all but taste the salt blowing off the East River, see the clear sky of a long-dead June. He knows the soldier can. Its eyes are distant but alive, and the light they reflect is blue, blue, blue.

Pierce knows this is the original file: flawless as if the soldier is still living that moment, in mind if not in body. This is its perfect memory. 

The Winter Soldier rides him -- tight and young and enthusiastic, with full parted lips and streaming eyes. Were he a younger man, Pierce would have lost control. "More," he gasps. He digs in the pocket of his robe. "Tell me more."

"Relieved. That's what I am, so relieved." It laughs again, wetly. "Thank you, thank you." It won't stop clutching at him. Pierce fucks it harder. "All I ever wanted, to keep you safe and loved. I promise. You can be you, and do great things, and I'll stay out of the way. But please just let me have this. I'll do anything, Steve." It sobs around Pierce's fingers when they slip into its mouth, it trusts him completely.

"I know." Pierce places two little white pills on the soldier's tongue.

If it were in an MRI, its brain would be incandescent with the lacework of memory. The shape of this moment is paved in forks of lightning, in Christmas lights, it’s the Brooklyn Bridge on New Year's Eve. 

The pills are less direct than the chair, but the language translates. Neural connections collapse in a chemical wake, the sweet blue grotto burns in a storm of fire and ash and disordered proteins. 

A line of confusion appears between the soldier's eyes. There’s a catastrophe unfolding in its skull -- the funeral pyre Pierce lights for James Barnes, for Michelle-that-was, for Alex. For Steve Rogers and the dream of a world that has no need for HYDRA. (Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.)

The soldier goes rigid. There’s a convulsion, then it releases Pierce to touch its own damp cheeks in bewilderment.

Pierce comes.

In the brief throes of orgasm, he clamps his fingers into a muzzle over its mouth. The hand gripping its face is marked by age in a way the soldier never will be, and this suddenly strikes Pierce as cruel. For whom, he couldn't say. 

"I'll tell you a secret,” Pierce whispers. Its skin is clammy under his grasp, wheezing hot against his palm. Huge eyes lock on him, and confusion gives way to terror as Pierce pulls it in close as a lover. "I wish I was the man you think I am. I wish I could have been." 

All falls away. This is how things must be: the soldier's brow smooths and empties, mismatched hands drop to its sides, breath slows to an even rhythm. Its expression glazes over and withdraws. The visiting ghost drowns again in the cold black depths of the Winter Soldier.

When the soldier climbs off him, its erection has gone all but completely soft. It steps back and stands at attention among the islands of body armor scattered across the tile. Just another shadow, a drugged-up jungle cat laid out for his inspection. After a few moments it begins surveilling the room again, attention darting from corners to exits and back again. Restless again, battle-ready. It takes no notice of the spent semen trickling down its thighs.

A swill of bourbon remains in Pierce's glass. He's not sure he wants it. "Wash off in the pool," he orders, finally.

The surface barely ripples as it wades up to its chest in turquoise. Outside, the snow turns to ice pellets. Pierce listens to them chiming against the glass wall facing his garden while the soldier scrubs itself mechanically. Streaks of old blood fan out from its skin, then dissolve into nothing. They disappear into water as warm and salty as tears.

**Author's Note:**

> x  
> x  
> x  
> x  
> x
> 
> Alexander Pierce summons the Winter Soldier to his private home for sexual favors. The soldier briefly resists, but relapses to servitude. He fellates then is penetrated by Pierce, then is forced to lose memories of past encounters and become docile again through administration of an experimental drug.  
> Dogs really can scream, and it does sound like people.


End file.
